intermittent thoughts on my life and work as the chess coach at IS 318, a public middle school in Brooklyn

Saturday, January 31, 2009

want to see more pictures of my kids?

I know that's your favorite part of my blog.

Emmanual Ogunremi: very sad that his opponent has not played ...d5Joel Ogunremi: fianchettoing the c1 bishop runs in their family (also striped sweaters)Shawn: about to checkmate that white king you see on f4. There's a black rook on g1 and black can win immediately with g5+Gio

Hector and Gio: rapidly improving

Cesar

Orlando. big genius.

David H.

my former student Darrian (almost 2000!), who is doing some community service by going over games for me

Darrian working with Matthew, a new sixth grader

Leon and Christian, former students who regularly look at games with me on Saturday as a part time job.

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Today I got into a fight with a parent from another school. The short version is that the CIS tournament was at 318 today, and I was left in charge because my assistant principal took the top kids to the city championships. So I told this woman she couldn't do something that she was doing in the school building and she started calling me racist and followed me to my classroom and refused to leave. So I called security, and they came and escorted her downstairs, but weirdly, they escorted her to the tournament director.

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and you know what my first thought was? It was wow, there is so much chess culture in my school building that even the school safety officers (real police!) feel that the TD is the ultimate authority.

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(later I had other thoughts about their motivations, but I like my first one best.)

7 comments:

What a day at 318K. I am sorry you had to deal with all the drama. In any case thank you for all your help today. We had over 530 students in attendance and all went well. I am still in shock with how that women treated you. I should mention that she treated several others equally bad, just so you do not feel too bad.

Your interpretation is very interesting and I hope correct. It would be nice to think that the police being wise to disputes at chess tourneys know that most of these "chessic" disputes really belong in a chessiasic court and so sought out the TD.

Maybe the cops were players?

Do you recall a few years back at the World Cup, the French player Zidane was so enraged that he hit another player - but his fundamental training never to use his hands was so strong, he head butted his foe. Perhaps the cops were veterans of chess tourney blow ups.